


1997 Was Kind of Shit

by Dagonet (TsukikoCurrier)



Series: Vaguely Magical 'Verse [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-16
Updated: 2015-11-18
Packaged: 2018-05-02 00:18:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5226659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TsukikoCurrier/pseuds/Dagonet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michelle Unwin wasn't always helpless; unfortunately, 1997 changed a lot of things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hogwarts, 1983-1990

          Michelle Fawley fell in love with one Lee Unwin at Hogwarts, after he had helped her escape some Slytherins with his friend Charlie Weasley her second year. Well, he had taken it upon himself to antagonise them and, when they were distracted by their new target, Charlie was able to lead her to safety. She'd watched Lee's form turn the corner, running backwards while taunting the Slytherins and grinning so wide she was sure his face would split, and known her heart was lost. He was far slower to come around- stubborn as a hippogriff and twice as cocky- but they got on the same page by the middle of sixth year.  
  
          Fawley was once a highly respected name, one of the sacred 28, but much like the Weasleys the name had become equated with blood traitors and enemies of heritage. Most people don't appreciate being told that their traditions and fears are outdated, turns out, and Michelle's parents didn't seem to understand that their actions affected how she was treated at school. She was loyal and hard working, honest and caring; not brave or cunning or stunningly intelligent. She didn't want to stand out, she just wanted to get through and get out of Hogwarts so that she could get on to _doing_ something with her life. Her family name took that possibility from her.  
  
          Lee was a muggleborn, frustrated at the stagnation he had found in the wizarding world. When muggles had develloped technology they left wizards in the dust- magic solved a lot of issues but not all of them. Wizards were far more prejudiced towards those without magic, going solely by what they learned in classes where the lessons were a good hundred years out of date with little exception. Muggles had their problems, and their prejudices, but as slow as their progress was in those respects there was still _progress_ which was something the wizarding world just didn't have.  
  
          What the wizarding world _did_  have, though, was Michelle Fawley. With her small smiles and incredible intelligence, Lee had fallen for her the first time they'd had Potions together and she hadn't cowed in the face of Snape. Lions may be brave in some ways, flashy and offensive ways more often than not, but there was something to be said for stubbornness and sheer resilience in the face of controversy. There were legends of James Potter's obnoxious persistence with Lily Evans- and even if they had been ultimately successful he didn't want to be compared to that. He'd always thought the story of James Potter wooing Lily Evans had sounded like he'd kept pushing and pushing and pushing until she had said yes to get him to shut up.  
  
          Lee wanted Michelle to be with him because she wanted to be- he could be patient until then.  
  
          Luckily for him, he had an in: Charlie Weasley; good friends (and sometimes something more) with Nymphadora Tonks- who was Michelle's housemate. They spent hours together, the four of them, doing everything and anything. He may have been infatuated with Michelle for her bravery- but it was her humour that really sealed the deal. She could make even the most innocent of things crass, and could improvise entire histories for one dumb action. He had never laughed as much as he did around her. But he didn't want to push his luck.

          It took years for him to work up the strength to actually ask her out, but from there it was smooth sailing. Charlie and Tonks went back and forth in their not-really-a-relationship while Lee and Michelle supported the. It all turned out for the better, Charlie far more career focused (and a career at such a _distance,_ too) than Tonks was- she was too flighty for him as anything more than a bed mate on occasion. They agreed on this, and moved on in their friendship with none of the hardship that comes with breakups. The best possible outcome, considering.  
  
          'Elle, I'm absolutely gone over you, but if we're gonna keep goin' after Hogwarts... I'm going back to the muggle world and... and I don't know if I'm going to come back.' Lee was pacing up and down in the Gryffindor common room, a few weeks before graduation. Charlie had fallen asleep hours ago, having given up on giving him advice after the third time he'd thrown a pillow that had nearly ended up in the fireplace. He slid down the wall, hands gripping his hair, hissing between his teeth at the sting. 'How can I ask this of her?' He goes to bed, restless and worried, resolving to tell her the next day no matter how dumb it sounds.  
           
          'Lee, you look worried- what's wrong?' He'd asked her to have lunch with him out by the Black lake, where the giant squid was lazing near the surface, but he'd had yet to take a bit of his food. He sat stiffly, hands in his lap and eyes examining the grass. She placed a hand atop his, and when he looked up she had to hold back a gasp; he looked miserable.  
  
          'Elle, I love you. You know I do. I want to marry you,' her heart skipped a beat 'but, there's something I need you to know. I've always wanted to join the army, it's the one thing I've always known I was going to do, you know that.' Michelle nods, unwilling to interrupt in case he clammed up. 'But I don't... I don't think I'm gonna come back to the Wizarding World after that.' There, he'd gotten it out.  
  
          Michelle didn't know how to respond- she'd always known that being with Lee was going to come with changes. Always. She knew that he'd expect her to spend time with his family, and learn more about the world he'd grown up in, but she'd always thought they'd come back to the Wizarding World at the end of the day.  
  
          'I- I don't mean to give up magic, Elle, I couldn't if I tried at this point, but... There's just not enough keeping me here. McGonagall told me in our "after graduation" talks that no one wants to hire a muggleborn- and, if they do, it's to be a secretary or something. There's just so much _prejudice_  and I want to take care of you, Elle, I want us to be an equal partnership of give and take and I can't give that to you, here.' Her heart breaks at the desperation in his voice, the sadness, and all she can do is pull him close and lay his head upon her shoulder.  
  
          'Then we'll go, and I'll continue to write for the Prophet, and we'll figure it out. One step at a time. Together.' Her voice is soft, but sure, and Michelle has no idea where the confidence is coming from but she's going to run with it. Her parents wouldn't like it, they'd likely disown her, but everything that truly mattered was here in her arms. They'd make it work.


	2. London, 1992-1997 Hogwarts, 1998

          'Lee, I know you're panicking but we need to get to St. Mungos. Now. I'm all for the breathing courses and shit you had me take with you but I am _not_  doing this without magic-' There's a sharp inhale, and Michelle braces herself on the side of the table before standing 'our son isn't going to wait for you to get your head on straight. Get your arse over here, we're flooing.' Lee's panicking, hands shaking and breath short, but he knows he's got to be there for Michelle. She's doing all the hard work, anyhow. He manages to lead her to the fireplace, and grips her tightly as the flames turn green; he's meeting his son today, barely two years out of Hogwarts.

          They name him Gary Perseus Unwin, and he's the light of their life. His first bout of accidental magic is more amusing than anything else; he turned a teddy around so that it wasn't looking at him. It was a garish set of colours- tie-dyed with longer push fur near the eyes in some form of eyebrows. It was like a troll doll, and when Eggsy used his first bit of magic to show his displeasure he laughed long and hard. Tonks huffed and stomped away before stumbling into Michelle, and they exchanged pleasantries before parting ways; Tonks back to Auror training and Michelle to the nursery.  
  
          But, like all good things, it comes to an end. Lee had managed to delay returning to the army by begging for a few months leave to help his wife with their new son, but he had to go back. He leaves his wand with Michelle as we always does, afraid to break the International Statute of Secrecy by grabbing his wand without thinking, and has resolved to bring a souvenir of some kind for his son each time he gets to stop by home- even if it's only for a few hours.  
  
          'Look what daddy brought you, Gary!' He's not old enough to answer, but Gary looks at his dad and smiles. It's a book of Arthurian stories, all done up for kids, and Lee's lap is immediately filled with the small child he calls his son. They read for a while, and it's only after Gary's fallen asleep and Lee has tucked him away that he realises something. He'd always felt like a pretty good person, he felt every happiness he thought he could when he and MIchelle had gotten married, but when his son was born... That was when he felt complete.  
  
          'Are you going to stare at him all night, darling, or are you coming to bed?' Michelle wrapped her arms around his middle, head perched on his shoulder, and he grins. He grabs her hands in his own, and pries them off of him to twist around and dip her, kissing her gently before righting her again.  
  
          'How could I ever deny such a request from my fair Guinevere?' He's got a stupid grin on his face, nothing but humour in his eyes, and Michelle giggles.  
  
          'Does that make you Arthur, then?'  
  
          'Yes, and our son the great Excalibur, the one thing that makes me King.'  
  
          The name sticks, except Gary can't pronounce Excalibur- so he says Eggsy. Lee barely called Michelle by her name, even addressing letters from base to Guinevere, and Christmas cards came from Arthur to Excalibur and Guinevere. When they're at home Lee calls her Gwen, and she always smiles and ducks her head, remembering that night and knowing that he's calling her his queen.  
  
          By the time Eggsy starts speaking he thinks that Eggsy has always been his name- it's what his parents call him, and his mum must be Gwen, and his dad Arthur. Like in those stories he's always loved. He has a play castle and toy knights and a dragon- they're his favourite possessions. When his dad leaves to go back to base Eggsy asks why he has to go- and Lee always says that he has to help the knights protect the realm. Eggsy thinks his dad is a hero.

          Lee Unwin gets recruited for Kingsman and tells his beautiful wife that he won't be able to call home for a while- the unit's gonna be in a dangerous spot. He gets through training with nothing but thoughts of his family keeping him going. Every time someone is referred to by their code name he sees his little Excalibur's wide eyed face as they read the stories of King Arthur and his knights. He wishes beyond anything that he had mastered wandless magic when things go wrong, but reminds himself that situations like this are precisely why he leaves the wand with his wife.  
  
          He makes it to the final two, shoots the tail of his dog with what is apparently a blank bullet, and gets put on missions with James to kill time until a tiebreaker is thought up. He, James, Galahad, and Merlin are all on a mission in the middle east when it all goes wrong. Galahad misses a grenade, and Lee's battle-honed instincts have him yelling and moving in the way before he consciously realises. By the time he does, had already jumped; spends his last moments thinking a silent prayer that Michelle and Gary will be okay without him, before landing on the explosive and covering the blast with his body.  
  
          Michelle sits on the floor of their living room, playing with Eggsy and listening to the Wizarding Wireless, waiting for Potterwatch updates. She hopes this whole war business will be over soon- she feels useless, sitting at home while her friends and classmates and husband all fight a war that surely affects her as much as it does them. But she has no family, anymore, and Lee's mother had died shortly after their wedding- and she wasn't going to risk leaving her son with strangers. She would use every ounce of magic within her to protect her child, just like every other mother, but she had to be there. So she sits in her house pretending nothing is wrong while people die for a cause she believes in just as strongly.  
  
          On an evening close to Christmas an older man in a finely fitted muggle suit comes to her house. He's not holding the notices that army wives usually get for their husbands dying, but his message is the same. She refuses his offer of assistance and cries, feeling more broken than she had the day her parents had officially disowned her. At least then she'd had Lee, now she was a single mother on the muggle side with not even her family's legacy to her name; she couldn't even go back to the Wizarding World, it was even more dangerous there. Until Voldemort was defeated there was no chance.  
  
          Months later she hears the wireless shouting 'Lightning has struck' and flies into motion. She doesn't have much to live for, nowadays, and what she _was_ living for would only exist so long as Voldemort did not win. She leaves Eggsy with her neighbour, a portly older woman who had brought over food in the wake of Lee's death, and disapparates.  
  
          The battle is a blur; she sees Charlie mourning the loss of his brother, watches as the man her Tonks married falls to an unnamed man in a mask, stumbles past the body of her friend not that far away. She watches as people die around her, and she kills without thought beyond the moment. Her world rests upon surviving past tonight. Upon victory.  
  
          It's a hollow victory, there's too many dead, but it's a victory nonetheless. Charlie won't look at her, too buried in his own grief, but she mutters a soft goodbye before leaving the battlefield.  
  
          There was nothing there for her, anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry the chapter is kind of small


	3. London, 1999-2003, Hogwarts 2010, London 2010-2014

          If there was one thing the whole war thing had taught Michelle it was that magic can't fix everything. It sometimes even causes more problems than it solves. Losing Lee had meant losing her other half, the one who had convinced her to leave her world behind after graduation, the one who had inspired her and kept her sane and gave her the strength to live in an unfamiliar place.

          Lee's death and the Battle of Hogwarts had done nothing but remind her that magic hurt as much as it helped. She'd barely been able to hold a wand after the Final Battle, and eventually just stopped trying to. At first she had spent countless hours cursing her own weakness but now, after having lived without it for so long, it was all too easy for Michelle to stop wishing for it altogether. All it did was remind her of what she'd lost. Her wonderfully brave and self-sacrificing Gryffindor, who had pulled her from her hobbit-hole and given her the strength to leave the only world she'd ever known. Her friends. Her family.  
  
          She'd had so much firewhisky that she could barely remember her name the first time she had met Dean Baker. She hadn't wanted to risk drunk apparating, or flooing, from the Leaky Cauldron. So she took the tube and walked the rest of the way, literally stumbling into Dean along the way. He'd walked her home and left her on the doorstep with his number in her pocket, though she could not remember placing it there. She waited weeks before calling, making sure Eggsy was off at gymnastics so as not to worry him.

          Dean had been sweet, and kind, when he'd first entered their lives. He came to Eggsy's gymnastics competitions and showcases, brought Michelle flowers; he weaved his web intricately between every breath and waited. It took over a year for Dean to show his true colours, to raise a hand to her, and barely a month after that her Excalibur was trying to be the shield he was never meant to be. Eggsy stood proudly between Dean's fists and her body and took every blow he could.  
  
          He wouldn't cry until he was alone in his room, holding the medal the older man had given to him close to his chest, whispering to himself that he was just trying to take care of his mum. Praying that he would be able to do so again tomorrow.  
  
          Somehow he always was.  
  
          When Eggsy got his Hogwarts letter he nearly ignored it, worried about his mum and what Dean would do to her without him there. But she'd pushed him off, saying she could take care of herself, _where do you think you got your magic, Eggsy?_ So off he went. He enjoyed every moment he was there, anxiously awaited the odd owl from his mother (she only sent them when Dean wasn't around) and learned so much he thought his brain would burst. Yes, he couldn't help but wonder why his mother didn't just pull out her wand and curse Dean sometimes. Sure, the ISS was a big deal, but surely there were ways around that. A muggle repelling charm on the door, or something?  
  
          Eggsy graduated on a lovely spring day, and for the first time in five years Michelle steps into the Wizarding World for something other than a bottle of Ogden's Finest. She nearly collapses at the sight of the castle, her mind fitting the horrors she had seen last over the picturesque view she actually has. She feels panic welling inside her, but pushes it aside because her Eggsy just graduated from Hogwarts and oh, Lee would be so proud of him.  
  
          'Mum? Why don't you just magic Dean out of our life?' It's a quiet question, one that he's afraid of asking, but he knows that if he doesn't do so now it will never be done. He'll wonder forever.  
  
          'Have you ever wondered why you never met your godparents?'  
  
          'I didn't know I had them until right now, mum, so no.'  
  
          'You learned about the Battle of Hogwarts in History of Magic, didn't you?'  
  
          'Well, yeah, but what's that got to do with anything?'  
  
          'Your godmum died that day, on the battlefield- and your godfather couldn't even look at me afterward. He didn't even say goodbye before I left.'  
  
          'You... left? Oh, mum don't tell me you-'  
  
          'I came and fought. The world you lived in was in danger, and outside of you I didn't have anything to live for, Eggsy. Your dad had just died, that man came in and dropped that medal in our laps, and there was one chance. I took it, I left you with a neighbour, and I watched your godmother and her husband die. I saw your godfather mourning his brother's death. I killed people, Eggsy, and no they weren't very good people but I still killed them. Me, and my wand, the last thing they saw.' Michelle's tears fell silently, the waver in her voice the only giveaway, and Eggsy wrapped an arm about her shoulders and squeezed, trying to impart some form of comfort without stopping her. She needed to let it out.  
  
          'I haven't touched my wand since. I still have nightmares, sometimes, and it's been over five years.'  
  
          He doesn't ask anything more, simply hugs her before apparating the pair of them home. He's resolved to join the armed forces, specifically the Marines, once he fixed up all of his paperwork on the muggle side. Michelle waves him off with a sigh when he leaves for basic, placing his wand with those of she and Lee in the box beneath her loose floorboard. She was taking no chances with Dean, who knew what could happen if he found them- worst of all breaking them. The small box was everything she had left of magic, just knowing it was there made her feel safe.  
  
          She calls Eggsy home, frantic, when he's almost finished his training, sounding far more terrified than she has any right be for his safety- until she mentions the baby. Eggsy didn't know much about his mother's life before his dad died, but once she told him that he had been a magical birth. They'd gone to St. Mungos. And with Dean living with them, having married her in everything but the legal sense, meant that that wasn't an option this time.  
  
          She was terrified.  
  
          So Eggsy packed his bags, cited a family emergency as his reason for resignation, and headed back home. He let Dean push him around, left his wand in the box his mum had put it in, and slowly grew away from needing it at all. Using magic against a muggle would make him no better than the death eaters his mum had fought against, and that was the last thing he wanted to remind her of. He forgot it was a tool in his arsenal, not wanting to bring the Ministry of Magic down on them for something as small as this.  
  
          They could handle it, it wasn't worth the risk of having his wand snapped.  
  
          He falls into the life living in the estates has set up for him, petty crime and drug dealing and sometimes more than that, until he loses his temper. He hasn't tried to use wandless magic since Hogwarts, but Rottie and Poodle had pushed their luck. They'd done nothing spectacularly stupid, but it was the straw that broke the hippogriff's back, so he accioed the keys to the car and took it for a joyride. He hadn't been in a vehicle this quick or dangerous since the one time he rode the Knight Bus- it was exhilarating. The closest he could get to flying.  
  
          Until it isn't.  
  
          Eggsy had no choice but to call the number on the medal and hope for a miracle. He nearly regrets using the medal's one use favour for something so seemingly small, but decides it was worth it. Worth it, to be able to protect Daisy and his mum from Dean- he'd given up his magic for those girls. He'd do _anything_ for them. Somehow the call works, and he's released with naught but a slap to the wrist and some cross words about dumb decisions and honour amongst thieves.  
  
          When the man who got him released (Harry Hart, and don't that sound like a fake name?) starts in on his record, Eggsy has half a mind to ream into him about the things he'd lost because his dad died, or about his mum's mental state because she never knew how he'd died, but holds back. He holds himself back because he can feel his magic bubbling beneath his skin, waiting to be directed, but that won't happen. Harry's a muggle, and he's not a death eater. Or a prick.  
  
So he lies, avoids the questions, and goes on about classism instead. He's saved from further discussion by Poodle and the boys showing up, and Eggsy tells Harry to leave (his magic's always healed his body before, why wouldn't it now?) but instead Harry locks the door and beats the gang to a pulp with an umbrella. And a watch. Mind, they were the kind of high tech gadgets that any Bond fanboy would drool over, but they were still an umbrella and a watch.  
  
          But, as Eggsy watches Harry's elegant violence, he thinks that maybe he doesn't need magic to be great.


	4. Eggsy, 2014-2015

Training to be a secret agent is more fun than it ought to be- and twice as terrifying as he thought it would be. Which, honestly, was probably dumb of him but not many people imagine what _training_  to be James Bond is like, they just want to be him without any of the work.  
  
They nearly drown and Eggsy wishes beyond reason for a bubblehead charm, but manages to break the mirror with his fists alone. Somehow. He's impressed with himself, for all of half a minute, before he sees the body of Amelia on the ground.  
  
They're given puppies, and Eggsy cares far more about temperament than stature or skill- if he gets sent home, at least JB will be okay with Daisy. He nearly shoots him, the first time they go running on the course, for keeping him back. He's fully prepared to be sent home (the lies he tells himself are uncountable) but for actions of his own, not some dog he didn't want in the first place. His finger was on the trigger, the gun steady in his hand, but he didn't do it. He spent the night after that apologising to the pug who had no idea how close he'd come to dying. Tried to convince himself that he wasn't like Dean, like the Death Eaters, willing to harm those who were defenseless for his own gain.  
  
He puts up with Charlie's antics, uses the skills he learned from his short stint with the Marines to succeed, and celebrates every angered huff and growl directed at him. These are all things he doesn't need magic for, things he doesn't even imagine magic could help, and he feels ready to conquer the world.  
  
He and Roxy jump from an aeroplane and he doesn't have a 'chute. As he's hanging from her legs as they fall from the sky he closes his eyes. He can feel magic at his beck and call, merely waiting for a direction to head in, and hopes beyond hope that the cushioning charm he's trying to cast actually works.  
  
It does, their legs don't break though they crash rather spectacularly, and Eggsy is exhausted. He's also angry, incredibly so, that an organisation that was trying to recruit people seemed hell bent on killing them- so he bitches at Merlin, and ends up arse-first on the ground, grinning like a loon. He's pretty sure he should be scowling, but he was just so far past exhausted to not find it hilarious. He had managed to do wandless, _silent,_  casting because he was just about positive he was going to at LEAST break his legs, if not die. But he had done it, and no one had known, and there was no sudden notice from the Ministry of Magic about his impeding legal consequences for breaking the ISS.  
  
They get assigned a seduction, and Eggsy has never been more grateful for the little bits of wandless magic he's mastered because of Dean. He breaks in to the club with no trouble, the locks falling open in his grasp with a muttered _alohamora_  and makes his way towards the target, grabbing a glass of champagne off a passing tray. He takes his first sip and knows something's wrong. He wasn't all that great at potions, back at Hogwarts (a time he can barely remember), but he knows his muggle drugs and what they taste like. Too much experience, thanks to Dean and his ilk. He tried to warn the others, but they didn't take him seriously- _what's the kid from the estates gonna know about the world?_ it was something he'd heard far too often. Posh girls may love a bit of rough, but their mates sure didn't.  
  
So he wasn't all that surprised when he fell unconscious, he honestly would have said "I told you so" if he'd been able to move his lips.  
  
He was, however, surprised to find himself tied to some train tracks, like the villains always did in those old films. He tried to pull free, but the ropes didn't have any give, and then that creep was threatening him. And yet, when it comes down to it, he's not gonna grass anyone, it was one of the few things he had to his name and he's definitely not going to tarnish that.  
  
'Is Kingsman worth dying for?' Even with all of the bullshit it totally is; it's the first time he's not felt like magic was the only thing making him worth something. It's the first time he hasn't felt like an outsider- like he's part of something. The first time he's felt like he's actually living up to the vague memory of his father; to the unsung hero his mother was.  
  
The train doesn't hit him.

He goes home with Harry that night, mind consumed with wildly inappropriate thoughts involving rope and a certain older gentleman, and mixes drinks. They trade anecdotes and stories like they were currency and dance around the tension in the room in elegant twists and turns. The finest waltz. The next day Harry takes him to get fitted for a proper suit, though Eggsy has no idea what he'd use it for if he doesn't become Lancelot.

'Being a gentleman has nothing to do with one's accent, it's about being at ease in one's own skin.' _Well,_ I _could have told you that_  Eggsy thinks to himself, for once feeling on equal footing with Harry, but then Harry continues on.  
  
'As Hemingway said, there is nothing noble about being superior to your fellow man. True nobility is being superior to your former self.' And Eggsy's world falls from beneath his feet. Was he any better a person than he had been? Could he be?  
  
He resolves to make that his new motto: am I better than I was yesterday?  
  
It's certainly better than constantly comparing himself to Death Eaters. Or Dean.  
  
Everything after that is a bit of a blur, Harry displays the Kingsman armoury like a bird of paradise displays its plumage and dance. They run into Valentine at the shop, he gets fitted by a stranger which is totally disappointing after Harry's cherry popping comment, and he goes back to the recruit bunks to await the final task. He felt like a man on trial about to hear his sentence- this was the last opportunity for a fuck up and as hard as he hopes he still doubts that he'll pass.  
  
Arthur hands him a gun, and blithely tells him to shoot his dog.  
  
Eggsy is pulled back to his sixth year Defense Against the Dark Arts class, and their lecture about the killing curse. Harry Potter himself had come in to give the lecture about the Unforgivable Curses, talked about his personal experience with each and what it felt like to cast them- all except the killing curse. He'd never had the will do to do- even Voldemort had been worth giving mercy to, in the end. But he said that there was one common factor between the three.

You had to _mean_ them.

It was things like that that made Eggsy think that magic was better than muggle weaponry. Anyone could pull a trigger; casting a spell took thought. Matters like life and death were things he took a rather magical approach to.

He didn't mean this. He pointed the gun at JB, hand shaking and finger nowhere near the trigger, until Arthur barely smirked before demanding the gun back. Eggsy points it at him in much the same way Arthur had at the beginning of this moment, hands steady and sure, until he hears a gun go off in a room nearby. Roxy did it. She was Lancelot. And he was nothing. Again.

He leaves in a huff, has a good cry in the Kingsman cab before arriving home, and greets his mum and Daisy. He's angry, at the sight of his mum's black eye. At himself for leaving. At Dean for hurting her. At himself for fucking up the one hope they had to get out of here (not that his mum knows). At Dean for breaking whatever little spirit was left in his mum after the Final Battle. He storms from the flat with every intention of bashing Deans face in with his fist.  
  
Magic wouldn't be nearly as satisfying.  
  
Unfortunately the car locks itself up and drives to Harry's place and no amount of pleading can get it to stop. Harry shows him his stuffed dog, he lectures him about how it was a blank, that Kingsman only condones the risking of a life to save another- but who are they to make those calls? Eggsy apologises for his outburst, promises to do anything he can to fix the damage he's done, and he's about to explain himself (who cares about the ISS this is _Harry_  and he needs to _understand_ ) when his glasses ring.  
  
Harry leaves, promising to fix all of this when he gets back, and Eggsy sits in his office because he told Eggsy to stay. Eggsy witnesses the most elegant ballet of violence he's ever seen. Including that duelling competition he went to with his Charms class- Flitwick had been eager to show off.  
  
Harry dies.  
  
Eggsy runs to bring the news to HQ, feeling lost and confused but still wanting to help in whatever small way he could.  
  
_A young man with potential, who wants to do something good with his life._ Harry had said that, about him, and if the only good he could do with his life was bring his thoughts to Kingsman then that's what he would do.  
  
Except Arthur is worse than Fudge was during the War. He was not ignorant but complicit and even encouraging of Valentine's scheme, and wanted to manipulate Eggsy's mourning of Harry to get him in on it, too. The drinks are poisoned, obviously- there was no way that Arthur would reveal his grand scheme without some sort of fail safe to ensure that he didn't run off spewing his mouth to whoever would listen- so he switches them. By hand, Arthur isn't worth the energy that wandless magic drains from him, and Eggsy feels like he knows how his mum felt on the battlefield.  
  
The last thing Arthur would see would be his face, he would die with the knowledge that he had been bested by a twenty-three year old man who hadn't been able to shoot his dog. But there's a difference, between the dog test and this moment.  
  
He _means_ this. More than that, he revels in it- he grabs the pen and slices into his neck with ease. He wishes that Arthur could still feel pain, that he wasn't _quite_  dead yet, that he could force Arthur to watch as his world falls apart around him- but there isn't time for that. He pulls the body to the dressing room, rides down the ridiculously slow elevator with a cooling body, and hops into the bullet train.  
  
Things get chaotic after that- they have mere hours before Valentine activates the chips. Roxy gets sent off to space to shoot down a satellite, and he gets to impersonate the man he just murdered and does it with a smile on his face.  
  
He's better than he was yesterday; he's doing something good with his life. He thinks that Harry would be proud, and conducts himself in the most extreme form of posh fuckery he can manage while being believable. He runs into a Princess that has to be desperate for a good shag if she's propositioning the first person who comes along.  
  
He manages to kill Gazelle. He doesn't really know how, it's all luck at this point, because they're just about equal in skill but she has the upper hand. She _is_ her weapon. But she falls, neurotoxin working its way through her body, and he grabs a leg as the closest weapon that could possibly take Valentine down from this distance.  
  
He throws it towards Valentine's back, hard as he can, and helps it along with a _depulso_ muttered beneath his breath. No harm done, the only witnesses don't have heads and it was barely a breath- Merlin would probably pass it off as Eggsy muttering to himself.  
  
Eggsy can practically hear Harry telling him how proud he is; but that doesn't matter as much as he thought it would.  
  
Eggsy's proud of _himself_.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, find me on tumblr at [AgentDagonet](http://www.agentdagonet.tumblr.com)


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